For Aviva Rahmani, a self-proclaimed “environmental artist”, art and science are meant to go together. She says artists and scientists can and should work side by side.
Rahmani, who will give presentations at Wesleyan on Nov. 16 and 17 to the art and environmental sciences departments, creates works that improve the environment. She has restored dumps to fertility, redesigned the outside of a train station, and worked extensively to restore salt marsh habitats.
Rahmani considers her art both activism and progress.
“I don’t have pretensions about what I am,” she said. “I’m an ecological artist which means that I try to identify the greatest hotspots in the environment and I try to develop teams with city planners and scientists.”
When she starts a project she goes through a process of research, interaction, education, outreach, and action to help draw attention to an environmental problem. Some of her artwork can be installed as part of an ecological restoration.
Her mission has taken her around her neighborhood and around the country. Rahmani has worked in her home state of Maine, the Liverpool and Oxford areas of England, and is currently working in St. Louis, designing an installation for a train station.
In 1991, she initiated “Ghost Nets,” a nine-year project to restore the salt marsh in the Gulf of Maine.
“The ghost nets are the fishing nets when they’re lost,” she said.
She links this metaphorically to the recent election.
“We’re living in a terribly uncertain time and I just think people are afraid to break out of that little cocoon of familiarity, but it will kill them just like the ghost nets would kill animals in the sea,” Rahmani said.
Since her art often requires the involvement of municipalities and cities, she said she has a keen interest in policy.
“You can’t sustain these kinds of restorations without zoning concerns, without paying attention to city policies,” she said. “That’s where you have the relation between open and urban areas.”
Rahmani comes to Wesleyan thanks to Vanessa Meer ’06. Meer first saw Rahmani’s work at the Hudson River Museum in the suburbs of New York. She was inspired to work to bring her to Wesleyan.
Meer said she thinks Rahmani will find a receptive audience here.
“I just thought that she bridged the gap at Wesleyan that sometimes exists between the arts and the sciences,” Meer said. “I hope she has a wide appeal because the environment is something that should concern everyone, and she shows people that you really can accomplish what you set your mind to.”
The Adelphic Education Fund and the Earth and Environmental Sciences department are sponsoring the two speeches.
“What I’d like to say to the arts department is that art is not a ghetto experience,” she said. “We should look at this model where artists are part of the entire culture and connected to the sciences.”
Rahmani said she plans to tailor a different message for the earth science department.
“I’d like to talk about how artists can in fact be team members and be far more than illustrators and adjuncts [on projects], and work as equals to change the world by just looking at things a little differently,” Rahmani said.
Rahmani said she has always sought to change the world. She is an environmental activist and also very involved in the feminist movement.
“It seemed to me that we were doing to the environment the same things we were doing in our dysfunctional relationships,” she said. “At some point I got really tired of dealing with child abuse, domestic violence and rape so I thought I would deal with a broader environmental metaphor.”
Her environmental mission has attracted Wesleyan graduates. Rahmani knows five alumni, some of whom have worked with her on her projects.
“There seems to be a Wesleyan outpost up here,” she said. “They’re all wonderful people.”
She said she hopes to inspire more students in her talks this week.
Rahmani speaks to the art department Tuesday at 8 p.m. at Alpha Delta Phi and to the earth and environmental sciences department Wednesday at noon in Science Center 309.
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